The first operational use of AAR in the USAF was by F84s in the Korean War. It was required as the Allies were pushed south and airfields overrun by the communists which meant many sorties had to be flown from Japan. The F84 had two probe mounted on the front of two tip tanks. As you can imagine, making contact was difficult with such an arrangement and required two contacts. This made it very slow and the Generals in charge wanted a better system which led Boeing to develope the flying boom system. For a while, both boom and probe and drogue systems were in use ( with the probes being more intelligently minted on the centreline) but it appears the boom was more popular.